Philosophical wonder woman

At the recommendation of a twitter friend, I picked up Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love from the library. Its playful conversational style and personal narrative flow made it a quick, easy read. It's one woman's story following a break-up and how bellydance became a fun, life-changing hobby to pull her out of the heartbreak. She describes adventures in both dating and becoming immersed in the bellydance community. I was more interested to read about her experiences with bellydance. Anyone who gets into it knows how addictive it is and so then you move to the next phase after classes; performing. Anyone who performs gigs can empathize with her experiences in the dreadful venues; shows getting delayed by hours, little pay, no dressing room area, uninterested audience members, etc. Performing in places ranging from senior centers, random carnivals, bars, concerts and the most unexpected places is always an adventure. She had a great analogy about how to ...

I have always been drawn to any TV show or movie starring and revolving around Super Heroines. In my youth obviously I was captivated by the Wonder Woman TV show starring Lynda Carter. Many hours were spent spinning & fueling the imagination with our adventures together. My grandparents had audio records of the Wonder Woman comic that completely captivated me. I became entranced with the idea of a woman super hero who didn't have to rely on men; she could rescue herself as well as others. I enjoyed The Bionic Woman as a child but not in the same way I looked up to a traditional Super Heroine (keeping with the league of many male characters). The 2007 Bionic Woman remake was enjoyable at first (especially because of kick-ass characters like Katee Sackhoff joining in). But repetitive story lines and uninteresting characters couldn't keep my attention (or apparently anyone else's). I've done a lot of searching in TV & movies and probably watched most of wha...

For the first time in my career I'm experiencing sexism. Considering this career period of time spans over a decade, that's pretty darn lucky and for that I'm grateful. It's a very challenging position to be in, as I do not enjoy conflict and would have difficulty saying anything. I'm not going to divulge the details of the situation here as I don't feel it's professional (though extremely tempting to vent). It's been months now of showing that I work hard, show up early and stay late if necessary and can do what is asked of me. Yet the situation remains the same. I have so much professional knowledge I'd like to contribute yet there is never opportunity. So I begin to feel like less of a professional and occasionally question my expertise in the field for which I was hired. That's fear doing the thinking; fear of judgement, failure, etc. But I digress. This situation caused me to do a little feminism research because I realize my p...

I love my therapist - she has awesome suggestions all the time for practical ways to deal with issues in your life. I think everyone should have therapy at some point in their life to examine issues that have been problematic and also to have an un-biased confidant with resources to help you. If you're like me, you want to see the good in people and you often do this to your own detriment. Missing an ex we were surely in love with is a great example... quite often we romanticize the good parts of a lost relationship instead of accurately remembering the good and the bad. I also have a tendency to romanticize people as being "better" for me than they actually are. Often it's very difficult to let go of someone you have attached to if you're incorrectly remembering the past. This is where the 'jerk card' comes in. Now I'd say on the whole usually people need reminders about the good in each other but it's the opposite for me. Someone has been a...

I pestered my friend Bree to write about her experience at Comic Con for those of us who weren't able to go. I KNEW her perspective would be entertaining and was I ever right. Enjoy this Comic Con 2010 report from an authentic geek girl! Guest post by Bryony Mackey "Lately I’ve seen a few articles aimed at women regarding SDCC. Let me just say, condescending does not even begin to cover them. It’s more than a little sad that in the year 2010 many people still swing that wide brush which paints any girls at a comic/sci-fi convention as just tagging along with a guy. It reminds me of when I showed up to an employee’s desk to fix a computer issue one time. He said ‘Oh, er, um…Are you like the ‘unofficial’ IT person? All the guys are busy right now?’ I was so taken aback all I could say at first was ‘Are you serious?’ (which was 100% more profanity-free and less violent than what ran through my head) Oh yes, he was completely serious. People really are taken aback when...

My alter ego in the group of awesome friends I call the Johnny Snows , is known as Hips of Fury (naturally, since I'm a bellydancer ). (Side note to the potentially confused - Johnny Snow is a reference from Dr. Horrible which is an awesome story we all adore. We are the Snows b/c we ski in CO. Dr. Horrible is plotting to be an evil mastermind in the ELOE, Evil League of Evil. Our group hasn't determined yet if we are good or evil ;-) ) The Johnny Snows are a creative group and Colleen has decided to write a script for a video so we can really have fun with the character names we made up at our holiday party. I already enjoy writing, so I quickly came up with a fictitious character: Hips of Fury – Alise Ardent (Ardent is a play on words being a synonym for passionate) Good or Bad? – Ambiguous / Struggles with it / Helps women, sometimes enjoys punishing men Powers – shimmies that create weather patterns & sonic booms, has power of hypnosis with slow movements and can...

In short, because it makes us feel beautiful! I asked a lot of fellow shimmy sisters to chime in on why they love bellydance and here are some answers I got... "it makes me feel fantastically beautiful and great about myself! :-)" "I am not a dowdy female." "it helped me discover a part of myself that was dormant!" "it empowers women to be more self accepting and celebrates joy of femininity, as we meditate with movement." The truth is, we all need to accept ourselves and feel comfortable in our skin and bellydance helps us do just that. It's a fact that someone is more attractive when they are confident and also when they let their inner inspiration and beauty shine through (see Owning Your Sexiness ). Bellydance teaches you to isolate and control every muscle in your body and with that comes an enormous sense of empowerment and freedom. Once the muscle memory takes over and the movements begin to click for you, I promise it will be in you...